The 1970s saw a transition in filmmaking. Restrictions on content were loosening, young filmmakers were shirking the grand scale style of the ’50s and ’60s, traditional gender roles were swapped, Civil Rights and hippy stories were told, and drugs were featured onscreen. One of the most popular film styles to shake up the country during that decade was Blaxploitation. The subgenre of exploitation films was geared toward urban blacks, though they gained a wider audience across other races and ethnicities.

One of the ways that blaxploitation movies set themselves apart was with stories focused on female heroes or vigilantes. Among the highest regarded, and best remembered was Coffy, a film starring Pam Grier that celebrates its 50th anniversary this month.

Coffy debuted in theaters on June 13, 1973, from writer and director Jack Hill, a filmmaker behind such cult hits as Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told and Foxy Brown. Grier starred as Flower Child Coffin, aka Coffy, an emergency room nurse who becomes fed up with the drugs and violence in her city. With her younger sister struggling with a cocaine addiction, Coffy becomes a vigilante to stop the men selling the drugs.

When Coffy arrived in theaters, it received mixed reviews from critics with some praising Grier’s performance and the concept, while others criticized the liberal use of drugs, violence, and prostitution.

Since then, the movie’s impact has been more positively viewed as groundbreaking for having a Black female hero, which led similar iconic blaxploitation movies like Cleopatra Jones and Foxy Brown. Like many screen vixens, they were hypersexualized, yet also supremely aware of the battle between good and evil, fighting for justice in the thick of it.

It has also been praised for Hill’s gritty filmmaking style, which has influenced generations of directors. Among those is modern auteur Quentin Tarantino with cast Grier, and Coffy costar Sid Haig, in Jackie Brown.